Oracle Just Said a Lot About OpenAI

On June 10, Oracle reported a record $638 billion in remaining performance obligations and disclosed that $75 billion of it is hardware its customers prepaid for or supplied themselves. The largest contract behind that total is OpenAI’s: roughly $300 billion of compute, to run on NVIDIA’s chips, from a company that funds what it commits by raising, carries a private valuation of about $852 billion, and counts NVIDIA among its investors. SoftBank’s $40 billion bridge sits under the stake, and weeks ago a group of lenders declined to price it. Microsoft, the largest shareholder, has by its own filings stepped back from funding what comes next. The commitments share a single question of timing: when the listing comes.

Oracle reported a record

On June 10, 2026, Oracle reported results for the fiscal year just ended. One figure led them: remaining performance obligations, or RPO, the revenue Oracle holds under contract and will book in later periods. It reached $638 billion, a record, up 363 percent from a year earlier and up $85 billion in the quarter alone.

Oracle reported a second figure. Most of the increase, Oracle wrote, came from large AI contracts “where the customer prepaid Oracle for the purchase of the GPUs, or the customer bought and supplied the GPUs to Oracle.” It gave the size: the prepaid and customer-supplied hardware portions of its large AI contracts now total $75 billion. And it added what that did for the company: it substantially reduces the amount of capital Oracle must raise to build out its AI datacenters.

Most of the record arrives years out. On its earnings call, Oracle put roughly 12 percent of the $638 billion converting to revenue within a year, another 34 percent over the two years after, and the rest — more than half — beyond three.

The demand comes from public contracts

The contracts behind the record are public. In September 2025, OpenAI and Oracle announced one: OpenAI would buy about $300 billion of computing from Oracle over roughly five years, starting in 2027. It is the largest contract publicly tied to that demand — a promise to pay rather than revenue earned.

To build the Abilene, Texas site that will run it, Oracle ordered roughly $40 billion of NVIDIA’s GPUs. And NVIDIA has offered a letter of intent to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI, paid in as OpenAI deploys NVIDIA’s systems.

One name recurs across all of them. SoftBank holds about 13 percent of OpenAI, roughly $64.6 billion, chairs Stargate, the venture behind the buildout, holds 40 percent of its equity, and carries what the project calls its financial responsibility.

OpenAI is the company at the center

OpenAI loses money. Its own audited numbers, which we added up separately, show costs that run well past revenue and roughly a year of cash at the end of 2025. It funds what it commits by raising.

The lead on those raises has changed hands. Microsoft anchored OpenAI’s first rounds, in 2019 and 2023, and has led none since. Thrive Capital led in 2024, SoftBank in 2025, and Amazon, NVIDIA, and SoftBank led the $122 billion round that closed in March 2026.

Its valuation stands behind the commitments

That valuation is set in private. In March 2026, OpenAI’s last round put it at about $852 billion. The shares have no public market; the figure is the price investors agreed in a private round.

Three positions rest on it. OpenAI raises against that value to fund what it has committed. SoftBank, holding about 13 percent, carries the private mark on its own books. Oracle’s contracted revenue depends on OpenAI paying for the compute it ordered. The same number sits under each.

SoftBank’s exposure carries a date. To fund the most recent $30 billion of its OpenAI stake, it took a $40 billion bridge loan in March, unsecured, due March 25, 2027. It has been covering the rest by selling: in late 2025 it sold its entire NVIDIA stake, $5.83 billion, and $9.2 billion of T-Mobile shares in the same quarter.

Another route ran through the stake itself: borrowing against the OpenAI shares rather than selling them. That loan stalled. SoftBank sought $10 billion backed by its OpenAI shares, cut the target to $6 billion in May, and on June 10 the talks broke off. The obstacle was the collateral: OpenAI trades nowhere, so the shares carry no market price, and a lender could not value or sell them quickly if the loan soured. SoftBank’s stock fell 8.3 percent that day.

S&P had marked the same spot in March. It cut its outlook on SoftBank to negative, citing the OpenAI investment’s drag on liquidity and on the credit quality of its assets. It called OpenAI the weakest credit among them and projected that SoftBank’s unlisted assets would pass half the portfolio.

Its IPO is the answer everyone names

The resolution repeats in account after account: OpenAI goes public.

A listing would do two things at once. It would raise capital for a company that spends past its revenue and funds what it commits by raising. And it would set a public price on the shares its investors already hold — the first the market has marked. A great deal rests on each.

The capital pays the commitments. OpenAI funds its spending on Oracle, on the compute that runs on NVIDIA’s chips, on the buildout itself, out of what it raises, and the listing is the raise now in view. The price frees SoftBank’s $40 billion bridge: a listed stake can be sold or borrowed against, where an unlisted one, as its lenders just showed, cannot.

On June 8, 2026, that offering took its first formal step. OpenAI said it had filed a draft registration statement with the SEC, confidentially. A confidential draft sets no price, offers no shares, and fixes no date. OpenAI has said the timing remains open, that a listing may be a while off. Reporting places the earliest window in the fall. The underwriters are Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

What Microsoft did

Microsoft owns more of OpenAI than anyone. Its stake of about 27 percent was valued at $135 billion in OpenAI’s October recapitalization.

On April 27, 2026, Microsoft and OpenAI restructured their partnership. Microsoft’s license to OpenAI’s technology became non-exclusive, running through 2032. The revenue Microsoft owed OpenAI ended; the revenue OpenAI owes Microsoft continues, now capped. OpenAI gained the freedom to run on any cloud. Its forward buildout has gone elsewhere — to Oracle and Amazon.

Microsoft made no separate filing for the change. Its formal mention of OpenAI came two days later, folded into the quarterly results on April 29 as an item it backs out. Microsoft reports earnings “excluding the impact from investments in OpenAI.” Across the first nine months of its fiscal year, that impact ran to a net gain of $5.9 billion — most of it from the October recapitalization, where the round’s higher valuation marked the smaller share as worth more. What three other balance sheets rest on, Microsoft’s accounts carried this year as a gain it sets to one side.

Microsoft kept the largest stake in OpenAI and the lightest forward commitment among its backers. The contracts, and the capacity still to be built against them, are Oracle’s now, not Microsoft’s. The same exposure crossed from one balance sheet to the other, and the filings record both ends.

A question of timing

NVIDIA’s investment in OpenAI, OpenAI’s compute commitments to Oracle and Amazon, SoftBank’s stake and the bridge that funded it: all of it rests on one company, valued in private at a number the lenders declined to price. Each of them is timed against one event: OpenAI’s listing.

The listing is confidential, undated, and by OpenAI’s own account may wait.

The obligations keep their own dates. SoftBank’s $40 billion comes due in March 2027. OpenAI spends past its revenue every quarter. The compute it has contracted is being built now, on debt and on customers’ prepayments, against revenue still to come.

So the question, beyond whether the listing will justify the valuation, is a simple one: when will it happen.

If it comes late, the cash has to come from somewhere. Microsoft’s own filings have already removed one candidate: itself. What remains is the others, the company at the center of them, and a date in March that does not move.